Syndicate

Irreducible Complexity

Alan Gishlick, Nick Matzke, and Wesley R. Elsberry critique the paper published by "intelligent design" advocate Stephen C. Meyer in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington in August, 2004. They conclude that Meyer's review paper presents an incomplete, misleading, and false impression of the biological evidence, and that his conclusion that "intelligent design" is supported because evolutionary alternatives are eliminated is illegitimate.

Ian F. Musgrave, Steve Reuland, and Reed A. Cartwright examine the claims of the Michael Behe and David Snoke paper published in Protein Science in 2004. While the goal of the Behe and Snoke paper is to generate impressive-looking improbabilities for the evolutionary development of a class of biochemical features, it turns out that use of biologically realistic numbers in their model shows that evolution is almost certain to develop them.

Nick Matzke provides a brief article covering some of the background information needed to understand arguments made about bacterial flagella and Michael Behe's claims of 'irreducible complexity' for that organelle.